The Garden of Forking Paths

by Jorge Luis Borges

'Summer was drawing to a close, and I realized that the book was monstrous.'

Fantastical tales of mazes, puzzles, lost labyrinths and bookish mysteries, from the unique imagination of a literary magician.

Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Magical Realism, Philosophy, Fantasy, Literature

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a spy… In the garden of bifurcating paths…
No, I’m a reader and the collection of seven magnificent stories is The Garden of the Branching Paths…
Do we live in the gnostic world known as Tlön, Uqbar, Orbitus Tertius?

“Copulation and mirrors are abominable.” The text of the encyclopædia ran, “To one of these Gnostics, the visible world was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they reproduce and multiply the planet.”

And The Lottery of Babylon is absolute… Existence there is a pure chance… And Babylon itself is nothing more than one unending game of chance… It’s enough to roll a die…

Like all men in Babylon, I have been a proconsul; like all, a slave. I have known absolute power, public disgrace, and imprisonment. Behold, my right forefinger is missing. Behold, beneath this rent in my cloak my flesh bears a red tattoo. It is a beth, the second letter of our alphabet. On nights when the moon is full, this symbol grants me sway over men whose sign is a gimel but, at the same time, it makes me subject to those marked with an aleph.

And in The Garden of the Branching Paths there is indeed a spy…

I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of a meandering, ever-growing labyrinth that would encompass the past and future and would somehow take in the heavenly bodies. Absorbed in these imaginings, I forgot my predicament as a hunted man. For untold moments, I felt I was a detached observer of the world. The living, twilit fields, the moon, the remains of the evening were playing on me; as was the easy slope of the road, which removed any chance of tiring. The evening was intimate, infinite.

Life is the garden of forking paths and we are always obliged to choose.

[Adina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read with the Short Story Club

As I sat in front of my computer to write a review of this story I realized I do not remember anything, 0, of the plot. I remember it said something to me when I read it but that is all. I guess I will have to re-read it before adding any rating. Borges, what are you doing to me. it seems your words still go over my head.

[هدى يحيى · Rating 5 out of 5]

دون أي مبالغة
تعد هذه القصة القصيرة أحد الأعمال التي زلزلت كياني
وأثملتني من المتعة

لو أن بورخيس لم يكتب سواها لكفته
وكفتنا جميعا لنعلم كم هو عظيم ومتفرد وليس له مثيل

***

إنها متاهة جديدة من متاهات بورخيس
أو قد يحسن بنا القول أنها صورة جديدة لمتاهة بورخيس الكونية
دوائر تحيط بدوائر
نتوه نحن القراء داخلها مع محاولاتنا اكتشاف المعنى

***

يمكننا أن نقول أن القصة عن جاسوس للألمان في الحرب العالمية الأولى قبل أن يهرب
يحاول إخبار من يعمل لحسابهم بالاسم السري للمدينة التي يتعين عليهم الهجوم عليها وقصفها
هذه الفكرة العبثية التي تدور حولها القصة وطريقة معالجتها
تخبرنا بطريقة بورخيسية صرفة أن التاريخ قد لا يكون سوى مجرد وهم

***

قصص بورخيس لا تقرأ مرة واحدة ولا تتوقع أن تفهمها من قراءة واحدة
وهذا ما يسبب لي كل هذه الإثارة بالأساس
الغموض .. العالم الجديد الذي يخلقه بورخيس من تضافر معارفه وشغفه وأفكاره التي ليس كمثلها شيء
صاحب البناء الأكثر غرابة للقصة القصيرة في التاريخ
...
يمكنكم قرائتها مترجمة بالعربية
http://alantologia.com/page/16456/

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

“He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time.”

This is one of Borges’ most famous stories, because it explores ideas later labelled as many-worlds that became a staple of sci-fi: every choice is a fork in the path, with different timelines emanating from each - like one of those choose-your-own-adventure books that were popular in the 1970s.

The central story of Ts'ui Pên's "Garden of the Forking Paths" is typical of Borges in its themes and telling, but the framing story of international spies in WW1 is rather less so. On the other hand, that means the story has Borgesian layers and versions, raising doubts about what is real and true: it purports to be an article that refers to a note in a textbook that refers to a document that is the central story.

That document, allegedly missing the first two pages, is by Dr Yu Tsun. He was spying for the Germans, and desperate to send a crucial message before it was too late. He does so by thinking out of the box.

“I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.”


Image: Part of “Emperor’s Labyrinth” wallpaper design (Source)

Race

There’s a race against time (it’s a spy story!), but at a deeper level, it’s a story about time.

There’s also an unexpected angle of racism: Yu Tsun describes himself as cowardly, knows the chief “fears” his race, and thus his motive is “to prove to him that a yellow man could save his armies”

Persist

“A labyrinth of symbols… An invisible labyrinth of time.”
If you find it hard to figure out on first encounter, fear not: all is explained in the penultimate sentence: the only way to send a secret message about a town called Albert was the otherwise motiveless killing of a man called Albert. Along the way, there’s the revelation that “The Garden of Forking Paths” is both a book and a labyrinth, not two separate things. An infinite book - what joy! And thus it’s about splits in time, rather than space, so all possible outcome occur.

Then reread it to fully admire the breadth and depth of the story.


Image: Part of “Emperor’s Labyrinth” wallpaper design (Source)

Quotes

• “Everything happens to a man precisely, precisely now... Only in the present do things happen.”

• “The telephone book listed the name of the only person capable of transmitting the message.”

• “The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.” [the power of positive thinking]

• “The solitary road. It went downhill, slowly. It was of elemental earth; overhead the branches were tangled; the low, full moon seemed to accompany me.”

• “A high-pitched, almost syllabic music approached and receded in the shifting of the wind, dimmed by leaves and distance.”

• “I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.”

See also

• This review is of a single story. It’s also the title of one of Borges’ collections, which I reviewed, HERE.

• I’ve reviewed Borges Collected Fictions and all the stories therein, linked from this review, HERE.

• For insight into the playfulness and erudition of Borges in person, read Jay Parini’s delightful memoir of his two-week Scottish roadtrip with an elderly Borges, Borges and Me, which I reviewed, HERE.

Short story club

I reread this as one of the stories in The Art of the Short Story, by Dana Gioia, from which I'm aiming to read one story a week with The Short Story Club, starting 2 May 2022.

You can read this story here.

You can join the group here.

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Defeating Time

I recently rebuked Robert Coover for considering hypertext a modern literary invention (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). Electronic technology may have given the genre a name but the idea and practice of hypertext has been around quite a while. I gave the example of the Bible as just such a text. And in his The Garden of the Forking Paths, Borges provides the conceptual rationale for hypertext 80 years ago. He also identifies its primary function: defeating time.

Like all hypertext, The Garden of Forking Paths is appropriately biblical. It has a beginning but presumes some sort of prior sentient existence; so really starts in medias res. And like the Bible, the story is about “A labyrinth of symbols,” whose interpretation is not given by the text. The book of Genesis has time as the first creation (the primordial separation of light and darkness). So quite understandably, Borges makes his “An invisible labyrinth of time.” And the labyrinth is, of course, a book.

The clear anticipation of the Multiverse, in which quantum effects continuously create alternative worlds is obvious:

“In all works of fiction, each time the writer is confronted with choices, he opts for one and discards the rest. In the inextricable Ts’ui Pên, he opts—at one and the same time—for all the alternatives. By so doing, he creates several futures, several times over, and in turn these proliferate and branch off.”

Sequentiality, therefore, takes on a new meaning. No longer does it imply merely ‘one thing after another.’ In Borges’s Garden, it means ‘everything after everything else,’ which is circular. On the one hand, there is no beginning since eventually all recurs. On the other, any point in the cycle can be considered a beginning, a place at which to jump on the carousel of existence: “... each is a point of departure for other branchings off. Now and again, the paths of this labyrinth converge.”

So the story in the story is “a vast riddle, or parable, about time.” Among other things, this conception resolves the paradox of eternity. If time is linear, it must have a beginning, and therefore by definition excludes eternity. The circularity of time in the Garden is authentic eternity, containing everything that could possibly happen within any slice of it. Good and evil are relativised not just to each other but to existence itself. They are both there and not there.

Thus the “unceasing remorse and weariness,” of the protagonist who feels intense pride as well as regret in his accomplishment. Not unlike Yahweh who decided that perhaps all was not that good in his creation just before initiating his exterminating Flood.

[Glenn Russell]

Nearly all the many commentaries I've read on The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges focus on the nature of time as a main theme or THE main theme.

Why do I not encounter more reflections on the nature of space? After all, a labyrinth serves as a pervasive, key image in the tale - and a labyrinth is, above all else, constructed in space. Thus, the story's narrator recollects a common procedure for discovering the central point in certain labyrinths is to "always turn to the left."

Imagine standing atop a hill and looking down at an extraordinarily complex garden labyrinth. Your task is to enter the labyrinth on the near side and exit on the far side. You were never that good at puzzles and you can easily imagine yourself wandering in the labyrinth for hours, maybe days before chancing upon the proper exit.

However, if you were given accurate, easy to follow directions such as "always turn to the left," an impossible quagmire immediately becomes an enjoyable short walk. The idea of time doesn't even occur to you, you can walk slowly or quickly or maybe even break into a trot, since it doesn't matter - you always know which way to turn.

Perhaps this emphasis on time derives from the narrator reading the beguiling words of the ancient Ts'ui Pên: "I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths." And then reflecting: "Almost instantly, I understood: 'the garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel; the phrase 'the various futures (not to all)' suggesting to me the forking of time, not in space."

The narrator muses further on Ts'ui Pên's novel, how, unlike the usual work of fiction where a man chooses one path and therefore eliminates all others, in Ts'ui Pên's novel, the protagonist chooses all paths simultaneously. He therefore creates "diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork."

Sounds so cool, even trumping a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' tale where various options are left to the reader on which way the plot can turn. With Ts'ui Pên's novel, the plot turns every way all at once leading to multiple plots, in turn, turning every way at once. Methinks it must have been a thick novel, maybe even in some ways similar to the Book of Sand, a book with an infinite number of pages from another Borges tale.

I suspect we can all pinpoint certain decisions we made along our path propelling us in a particular direction (and thereby eliminating other directions). If only we made a different choice, how different our life would have been.

Ah, if only we could see, really see, into the future. Our inability to see into the future drove science fiction author Philip K. Dick bonkers. He was forever creating characters possessing the power and ability to read the future like an open book. What an advantage they had!

Much in this Borges tale hinges on conflict and war, seeing a man as an enemy or a friend, victories and total victory - in other words, seeing the world in terms of me (or us) and the other. In this way, aren't we all held in the grip of the play of maya, the veil of illusion? Seen thusly, wouldn't our liberation, our transcendence, our moksha be framed in terms of space rather than time? We could then reach a level of realization, in effect, a release, a moksha, where we express with all our heart and mind, with our very being: 'Thou art that' or in Sanskrit: 'Tat tvam asi'?

Or would this simply amount to another turn within the Garden of Forking Paths?


Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The basest of art’s temptations: the temptation to be a genius” (from The Approach to Al-Mu’tasm). In this collection, Borges proves that he succumbed. And I’m very glad he did.

I have the Collected Fictions (with copious translator's notes), but am splitting my review of that into its components, listed in publication order: Collected Fictions - all reviews. This is the second, published in 1941, and this is where Borges starts to blow my mind.

Some of these stories are initially rather opaque, but they’re also short and SO worthwhile: with many, I read once to get a feel for what it was about, then immediately reread it to connect with it in context.

• The first time is gloriously disorienting, almost as it’s in a subtly different dialect from my own; it creates a hypnotic desire to understand.

• The second time, a switch has been flipped, I have the key to the kingdom, and the ideas slot into place, whilst retaining a pleasing degree of elusiveness.

“There is no intellectual exercise that is not ultimately pointless” (from Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, below). I don’t think Borges himself believed that, and these remarkable stories are a justification of such exercises.

The descriptions of individual stories below include minor spoilers; major ones are hidden with spoiler tags. If in doubt, scroll down to the Quotes section at the end.

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius 6*

This is the longest and has its own review, here.

The Approach to Al-Mu’tasm 6*

A review of a non-existent book (unless someone has since written it), that even notes the differences between the first and second editions. This piece allegedly had one of Borges’ friends try to order a copy from a bookshop.

The book is described as the “first detective novel written by a native of Bombay” and is an epic, sweeping across India, with a huge cast, but an “uncomfortable amalgam” of overwrought Islamic allegorical poems and European detective fiction.

The story though, is a recursive meditation on the duality of good and evil. “The object of the pilgrimage was itself a pilgrimage.”

A law student rejects his Islamic faith and end up among the poor, where he “perceives some mitigation of the evil: a moment of tenderness, of exaltation, of silence, in one of the abominable men”. He divines that the goodness must be a reflection from an external source, and sets off to find ever purer connections, via a series of connected rooms: “the insatiable search for a soul by means of the delicate glimmerings or reflections this soul has left in others”.

Each of us is like a stone cast in a lake: those nearest us are most affected, but even far away, there are ripples of who and what and how we are.

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote

Every reader reads a different book. Even the same reader reads a different book on each encounter.

A self-referential exploration of the paradoxes of original composition, and the “new technique… of deliberate anachronism and fallacious attribution”. The last of those is a recurring habit of Borges himself, including in this story, which purports to be about a real writer.

This is a short essay about the great, but unfinished work, of a writer, who “did not want to compose another Quixote” but “the Quixote” by combining the don and Sancho into a single character and by, in some sense, becoming Cervantes. His tactic is to “learn Spanish, return to Catholicism, fight against the Moor and the Turk” and forget everything that happened after Cervantes published.

Menard’s other writings are listed, but it’s made clear that Quixote is his only important work, “perhaps the most significant writing of our time”, even though, over the course of his life, he only manages to write just over two chapters! A futile quest, perhaps, like Don Quixote’s own?

It becomes stranger as the reviewer describes Menard’s work as being “word for word” the same as Cervantes’, but also “more subtle” and “almost infinitely richer”, and yet different as well, because it “overlooks – or banishes – local colour” and many other incidents. So is it the same, or different? Is the Emperor naked or clothed?

Don Quixote is the obvious book on which to base this story: it was a favourite of JLB’s, mentioned in many of his stories (including "Parable of Cervantes and the Quixote", which is in Dreamtigers). More importantly, Cervantes did something similar to this story. Part two of DQ was written after what would now be called fan-fic. In part two, DQ himself treats part one as true, criticises the unofficial sequel, and responds to the resulting pressure of fame.

Calvino’s If on a Winter's Night a Traveler has Borgesian nods, including a writer following a similar path the Menard. See my review HERE.

Douglas Adams like this story. He wrote "You should read Jorge Luis Borges’s short story ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’. It’s only six pages long, and you’ll be wanting to drop me a postcard to thank me for pointing it out to you." It’s in the foreword to P G Wodehouse’s Sunset at Blandings and quoted again in his own (posthumous) The Salmon of Doubt.


The Circular Ruins 6*

A circular story about dreaming reality. Pinocchio meets Inception and The Matrix, in Plato’s cave or Wonderland?

A man arrives at a temple to “dead, incinerated gods”; it is abandoned and he came with a strange purpose. “The goal that led him on was not impossible, though it was clearly supernatural: He wanted to dream a man… to dream him completely, in painstaking detail, and impose him upon reality.” I misread the final phrase, and thought reality would be imposed about the man conjured by dreams. Both ideas are relevant.

It’s a strange and difficult task: “molding the incoherent and dizzying stuff that dreams are made of is the most difficult work a man can undertake… much more difficult than weaving a rope of sand or minting coins of the faceless wind”.

I’ve never quite had a lucid dream, but this describes something tantalisingly like it: “in the dreaming man’s dream, the dreamed man awoke”. Pinocchio wanted to be a real boy, and the dreaming man wants the same for his “son”. He gradually accustoms him to reality, and erases his early memory because he “feared that his son… [would] somehow discover that he was a mere simulacrum… the projection of another man’s dream” – and what could be worse than that? Seriously, what could be worse? The sad irony is that the man himself is another man’s dream.

The Lottery in Babylon 6*

This opens with disorienting paradoxes about the narrator who has led a life of opposites, but also “known that thing the Greeks knew not – uncertainty”. The language and ideas were even more reminiscent of Kafka than some of the other pieces (is Qaphqa, a sacred latrine(!) where informers can leave messages, a pun?).

“The Lottery is an intensification of chance into the order of the universe… chance should intervene in every aspect.”

We are all subject to the whims of fate, nature versus nurture, chaos and order, faith, justice, and chance. But in Babylon, actual lotteries are involved – to an absurd and alarming degree. Conventional ones lost their appeal, “they had not moral force”, so unlucky draws were added to the positive wins. But gradually the people needed a more powerful hit than that. The Company that runs it becomes increasingly powerful (and secretive - the Lottery is drawn in a labyrinth) as every aspect of life, and indeed the draw, is decided by draw.

Although “the number of drawings is infinite”, an infinite amount of time is not required, but rather, “infinitely subdivisible time”.

Does the Company exist – now or in the past – and does it matter?

The Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain

Here, Borges is name-dropping philosophers and writing an amusingly catty review of life and works of a fictitious author, starting by noting the “necrological pieties” in the very short obituary in the Times Literary Supplement. He goes on to say that his first book, The God of the Labyrinth, was good except for “somewhat careless plotting and the hollow, frigid stiltedness of certain descriptions of the sea”! Fortunately Borges was able to salvage one of Quain’s works and turn it into the far superior The Circle of Ruins (see above) – so recursion, about a circle. Neat.

The Library of Babel 6*

This has its own review, here.

The Garden of Forking Paths

This has its own review, here.


Quotes

• “No one saw him step from the boat in the unanimous night.”

• “The mirror hovered, shadowing us.”

• “In life… he was afflicted with unreality, as so many Englishmen are.”

• “Those close English friendships… that begin by excluding confidences and soon eliminate conversation.”

• “The aesthetic act must contain some element of surprise, shock, astonishment.”

• “To speak is to commit tautologies.”

• “He who is to perform a horrendous act should imagine to himself that it is already done, should impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past.”

• “A keen and vaguely syllabic song, blurred by leaves and distance, came and went on the gentle gusts of breeze.”

• He “did not believe in a uniform and absolute time; he believed in an infinite series of times.”

[فايز غازي Fayez Ghazi · Rating 4 out of 5]

- "حديقة الدروب المتشعبة" عن جاسوس ألماني (صيني الجنسية) في الحرب العالمية الأولى. تبدأ القصة بملاحقة الجاسوس "يو تسون" من قبل ضابط الإستخبارات الإنجليزي "مادين". يعرف الجاسوس أن "مادين" سيقبض عليه مع غروب الشمس، ويحتاج إلى طريقة لإعلام قيادته في ألمانيا بموقع المدفعية البريطانية لتدميرها. فيقوم بحبك خطة (خطة جبان حسب تعبيره) وينفذها. يصل إلى ضاحية "فنتون"، ويتذكر عندها احد اجداده الذي حاول في يوم من الأيام كتابة رواية معقدة، إلى جانب بناء متاهة ضخمة، وقد قُتل قبل أن يتمكن من ذلك، ولم يتم العثور على المتاهة، لكن المخطوطة وصلت الى ستيفن البيرت ، وقام بدراستها واكتشاف أن الرواية هي المتاهة ذاتها! في هذه النقطة تبدأ عبقرية "بورخيس" الإحتمالات اللامتناهية في الأزمنة المتعددة فيقوم بسرد كل الإمكانيات الممكنة او المتصور امكانها وهكذا تتفرع القصة إلى أشكال لا نهاية لها. احد الأشكال يظهر الخانمة حيث يقتل "يو تسون" "البرت"، ويقبض "مادين" عليه. ومع إلقاء القبض عليه وإعدامه، تقرأ القيادة الألمانية وفاة ألبرت في الصحيفة، وتدرك أن المدفعية البريطانية موجودة في مدينة ألبرت، وتقوم بقصفها وهو ما حاول "يو تسون" ايصاله بكل ذكاء.

[Ian "Marvin" Graye · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Universal Library

If life (or a life) can be construed as a text, then the universe might be (analogous to) a library:

"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries."

This early, 1941 collection is a mini-gallery of Borges stories that revolve around construction and interpretation, imagination and understanding, of the universe. On the way, it takes in time, space, meaning, truth, consciousness, our selves and our relationship with the universe.

Vast and Ambitious

For Borges, Man is a reader or librarian trying to read, interpret and understand the Library.

It's a vast project. Like its object (and perhaps its subject), it's infinite. Vast books can and have been dedicated to the project.

Borges makes this project his own, from a fictional point of view. However, he works under a self-imposed constraint:

"It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them.

"A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books."

Levity and Brevity

The result is one of enormous brevity, yet it's no less intellectually challenging and stimulating.

Borges jokingly blames laziness, but it's actually an amazing facility to hint at in five minutes of our reading time what could take writers and philosophers 500 pages to labour through (and not communicate so clearly).

Besides, we can safely assume that Borges was familiar with some actual vast works on his subject matter, not just imaginary ones.

The Appearance of Reality

Borges doesn't need to be encyclopaedic in his approach to the universe. He just pretends to be encyclopaedic. He uses detail, citation, criticism to feign plausibility, verisimilitude, truth and comprehensiveness.

His aim is to create a fictitious world that appears to be real. He hopes his fragments will convince us that they contain the essence of the entirety.

However, the whole project remains fictional and illusory.

In one of the worlds that he creates, there is a belief that "all books are the work of a single author who is timeless and anonymous."

In a way, it seems, there is only one book, and one act of creation.

Borges the Builder

We've become accustomed to authors "world building". They strive to build a fictional world that convinces us of its veracity.

On the other hand, religions posit that God created the world, the entirety of the universe.

Borges might be a writer, but he seems to place himself somewhere between the conventional writer and God.

While God might have created the material world, Borges creates an abstract and imaginary world.

However, in the process, he self-consciously draws attention to the process and method of creation. He is a master of metafiction.



Erik Desmazières - "The Library of Babel" (1997)


The Hermeneutics of the Library

Equally, Borges is interested in the interpretation and understanding of the universe, the Library, the book.

He works at the boundary of the imagination, philosophy and hermeneutics. Indeed, his writing suggests that philosophy is fundamentally a work of imagination and interpretation of the Library of the universe.

Writers and philosophers alike are trying to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

Once we accept this metaphor, this truth, Borges invites us to have some fun with the universe he has created.

In a world otherwise preoccupied with the pursuit of order, sense and truth, he introduces play and games that involve hoaxes, fraud, fallacy, artifice, illusion, unreality, illogic, mirrors, mazes, labyrinths.

A World Deciphered by Detectives

This places the curious reader in the role of a detective who must sift through the evidence in order to determine the meaning of life:

"Tlön may well be a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth forged by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men." At least in the English translation, the word "forged" might be used in its two different senses in this sentence.

This decipherment is not as easy as it sounds. There is no certainty that any path taken will lead to the truth.

Like one of Borges' narrators, we all work at "the conjunction of a mirror and an encyclopaedia."

For all the detail that the encyclopaedia might contain, the mirror reminds us that the universe (like our minds) is infinite, recurring and self-reflexive.

Making Sense of Books

Because a book is a mere fragment of the universe, there should be no reason to believe that the truth can be found in a book, either easily or at all. One of the narrators refers to "the vain and superstitious habit of trying to find sense in books, equating such a quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of the palm of one's hand..."

Nevertheless, Borges implies that a book, (precisely) because it contains a fragment of the universe, can also reflect its entirety or, at least, its infinity:

"I had wondered how a book could be infinite. The only way I could surmise was that it be a cyclical, or circular, volume, a volume whose last page would be identical to the first, so that one might go on indefinitely."

The Chaotic Library

Still, insofar as the books Borges writes about contain aspects of the universe, they reflect the chaos of the universe as a whole. Perhaps a book is like a mirror held up to the universe, even if it is refracted through author and reader.

This focus on chaos is part of the significance of the last story, "The Garden of Forking Paths". The paths lead to "several futures" (though not necessarily all).

We are accustomed to believing that a choice of paths represents a spatial decision (e.g., which direction to head down).

However, "the garden of forking paths was the chaotic novel; the phrase 'several futures (not all)' suggested to me the image of a forking in time, rather than in space."



Erik Desmazières - "Library of Babel, Hall of Planets"


The Labyrinth of Time

The mysteries of the universe are equally and inevitably mysteries about time and the nature of time:

"All things happen to oneself, and happen precisely, precisely now. Century follows century, yet events occur only in the present."

Hermeneutically, the Library, the universe is a "labyrinth of symbols. An invisible labyrinth of time."

There is much in the stories about rival philosophies of time:

"[One school of philosophy] denies the existence of time; it argues that the present is undefined and indefinite, the future has no reality except as present hope, and the past has no reality except as present recollection...

"[Another school asserts that] all time has already passed, so that our life is but a crepuscular memory, or crepuscular reflection, doubtlessly distorted and mutilated, of an irrecoverable process."

We aren't asked to choose between these alternatives. Borges lets us explore many forked paths:

"The Garden of Forking Paths is a huge riddle, or parable, whose subject is time."

In the Borgesian world, our imagination can experience what it might be like if any one of these theories of time was true.

Five Minutes of Vastness

Ironically, Borges gifts us an experience of the vastness of infinity, of the labyrinth of time, in stories that rarely take more than five minutes to read. For Borges, this is the true pleasure of the imagination: to derive infinite pleasure from something infinitesimal.

Still, this world is capable of being simultaneously vast, illusory and mischievous.

Borge jokingly warns that some won't be able to get their heads around his Library:

"Since not everybody is capable of experiencing [the pleasure of the imagination,] many will have to content themselves with simulacra."

Even if we can get into the Borgesian world, we might find, like one of the narrators, that our historical grip on reality is illusory:

"With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he realised that he, too, was but appearance, that another man was dreaming him."

If only we could be certain that we are the dreamer, not the dream!

But is this just the ego vainly trying to master an infinite universe of which it has no real comprehension and over which it has no real power?

For Borges, as well as us, the questions have vast and entertaining implications.





ADDED EXTRAS:

“Merely a Man of Letters” - An Interview with Jorge Luis Borges by Denis Dutton, Michael Palencia-Roth and Lawrence I. Berkove

http://denisdutton.com/jorge_luis_bor...

Podcast:

http://denisdutton.com/borges.mp3

"Dutton: Why don’t you tell us about some of the philosophers who have influenced your work, in whom you’ve been the most interested?"

...

"Borges: ...I have no personal system of philosophy. I never attempt to do that. I am merely a man of letters. In the same way, for example that — well, of course, I shouldn’t perhaps choose this as an example — in the same way that Dante used theology for the purpose of poetry, or Milton used theology for the purposes of his poetry, why shouldn’t I use philosophy, especially idealistic philosophy — philosophy to which I was attracted — for the purposes of writing a tale, of writing a story? I suppose that is allowable, no?

Dutton: You share one thing certainly with philosophers, and that is a fascination with perplexity, with paradox.

Borges: Oh yes, of course — well I suppose philosophy springs from our perplexity. If you’ve read what I may be allowed to call “my works” — if you’ve read my sketches, whatever they are — you’d find that there is a very obvious symbol of perplexity to be found all the time, and that is the maze. I find that a very obvious symbol of perplexity. A maze and amazement go together, no? A symbol of amazement would be the maze.

Dutton: But philosophers seem not content ever to merely be confronted with perplexity, they want answers, systems.

Borges: Well, they’re right.

Dutton: They’re right?

Borges: Well, perhaps no systems are attainable, but the search for a system is very interesting.

Palencia-Roth: Would you call your work a search for a system?

Borges: No, I wouldn’t be as ambitious as all that. I would call it, well, not science fiction, but rather the fiction of philosophy, or the fiction of dreams. And also, I’m greatly interested in solipsism, which is only an extreme form of idealism. It is strange, though, that all the people who write on solipsism write about it in order to refute it. I haven’t seen a single book in favor of solipsism. I know what you would want to say: since there is only one dreamer, why do you write a book? But if there is only one dreamer, why could you not dream about writing a book?"



SOUNDTRACK:

Valeria Munarriz - "Alguien le dice al Tango (Jorge Luis Borges/Astor Piazzola )"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAWtt...

Susana "La Tana" Rinaldi - "El Tango" (Borges)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Br6i...

Astor Piazzolla - "El hombre de la esquina rosada" (Borges)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnWFc...

A. Perini (Ensemble Resonanz, Beat Furrer) - "Exploración de la biblioteca de Babel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn4wc...

Internal Fusion - "La bibliothèque de Babel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VE8R...

Krystenism - "The Library of Babel"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3w1l...

Catedra Saldaña - "La biblioteca de Babel" (Proyectual II)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmmrO...

Causa Sui - "Garden of Forking Paths"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00fUX...

Causa Sui - "Garden of Forking Paths (Live at Roskilde 2012)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN4n4...


Causa sui denotes something which is generated within itself. This concept was central to the works of Baruch Spinoza, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Ernest Becker, where it relates to the purpose that objects can assign to themselves. In Freud and Becker's case, the concept was often used as an immortality vessel, where something could create meaning or continue to create meaning beyond its own life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causa_sui

[Sr3yas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in 1941, The Garden of Forking Paths is a fascinating short story set during the first world war. The story introduces a Chinese spy living in England and working for Germany during the war, 1916. His cover has just been blown and he is on the run with sensitive information.

He travels to meet one person who might be able to deliver this information to Germany.

And at this point, everything changes... to a hard science fiction thesis! (Think: Multiverse)


I enjoyed this story immensely, mainly because I had no idea what was going on and when I finally pieced together the story, I was quite blown away. Also, Jorge's writing style reminded me of recent works of Ted Chiang, a personal favorite.

Recommended.
------------------------------
By the way, do you want to know how I found this short story?

It all started with the movie Coherence (2013)

For those who haven't seen the movie, it's about a group of friends who experience the break down of reality barriers as they get together for a dinner party on an evening when a comet is passing overhead.

After I finished watching this rather trippy story, I came to Wikipedia to read about the movie and ended up on "See also" section which featured links to three quantum mechanics theories and ONE short story written in 1941.

That's how I found this story!

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 5 out of 5]

5★
“In all fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives he chooses one at the expense of the others. In the almost unfathomable Ts'ui Pen, he chooses - simultaneously - all of them. He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times.”

What a confusing but intriguing story. It’s the story of a spy in WW2 who wants to send a warning of enemy plans, and seems to choose an unusual way to do it.

Meanwhile, we follow him and his discussion of good and evil and men and time and the future and the past. There seem to be layers, sliding over or under or alongside each other, so I was never entirely certain what the ‘truth’ was. I think certain things were intended to be ‘true’.

“I thought that a man might be an enemy of other men, of the differing moments of other men, but never an enemy of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams, or the West wind. Meditating thus I arrived at a high, rusty iron gate.”

I left the last sentence there to show that he is thinking as he is walking. In fact, he is on his way to a strange place in the country. He has no idea what to expect.

“But from the end of the avenue, from the main house, a lantern approached; a lantern which alternately, from moment to moment, was crisscrossed or put out by the trunks of the trees; a paper lantern shaped like a drum and colored like the moon.”

There is discussion about an ancient relative of his, of labyrinths, of puzzles, and of how one should approach making choices. It is reminiscent of choose-your-own-adventure stories and also of a favourite of mine, Kate Atkinson's Life After Life . In her book, the story is told and retold several times. This doesn't work quite that way.

Interestingly, the website from which I downloaded my edition is a gaming website.
mycours.es/gamedesign2012/files/2012/...

If you go to the home page, you’ll see what I mean. (I know, it’s not a ‘secure’ website, but I risked it.)
http://mycours.es/

I can see why it might have been selected by them – it seems perfect for gamers or anyone who enjoys puzzling things out. I can’t say I have figured it out, but I liked the conclusion I came to.

Another good story from the Goodreads Short Story Club Group. If you join, you’ll find links to all the stories being discussed.

[Incidentally, my review of Life After Life ]

[Dmitry Berkut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jorge Luis Borges' "The Garden of Forking Paths," written in the 1940s, anticipates many ideas now central to modern multiverse theories, as seen in contemporary works like Blake Crouch's "Dark Matter." Borges' story, published decades before the term "multiverse" gained prominence in science fiction and theoretical physics, explores the idea of multiple, branching realities—a concept that has since become foundational to discussions of parallel universes and alternate realities.

While contemporary stories often delve into the scientific and ethical implications of parallel worlds, Borges' narrative stands out for its philosophical depth. He employs the concept of forking paths not merely as a plot device but as a profound meditation on the nature of time, choice, and existence itself.

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

It just happened that we were reading this story by Borges in the Short Story Group as I was watching my nephew play the video game “Odyssey”, part of the Assassin’s Creed series. My nephew had chosen to play through the character Kassandra, instead of Alexios. At first I was interested to see whether this Kassandra had inherited from the classical Cassandra her gift and curse – capable of foretelling but not of being believed. But I soon realized that this characteristic was not incorporated in the game. What I noticed instead was that the action stops at some points and gives a choice to the player: shall she trust and follow the messenger or shall she not? Shall she go and rescue the prisoner first or attack the tower foremost? and so on. It made me wonder what the ‘decision tree’ was like. How many nodes were there, and what was the number of possible combinations with the resulting number of narratives. Numberless? I also thought that once a given path was chosen, it was unavoidable that one would think of going back to explore alternatives – the ‘what if?’

It seems that Borges must have thought of a similar scheme when he wrote this story. The accidents of time in a narrative; the simultaneity of choices; the circular nature of memory; the constriction of fixed chronologies; the master key to solving labyrinths; the fabrication of fiction. The accumulation of data and of knowledge…. All this makes for a very mysterious garden.

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Side note: today (August 24) is Borges' aniversary and here is a great article on his vision of Time: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/09...

----

I learned about this story in Paul Halpern’s book The Quantum Labyrinth: How Richard Feynman and John Wheeler Revolutionized Time and Reality . The author mentioned it when explaining Feynman’s theory ‘sum over histories’ about the multiple paths taken by particles interaction at quantum level.

I don’t think science was in Borges mind when written this short SF story, but it has a deeply philosophical side as well. One can find lots of meanings reading it. Brilliant.

Can be found here: https://archive.org/details/TheGarden...

[Connie G · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Garden of Forking Paths" is an imaginative work with many layers. In an opening frame, an unnamed narrator refers to a confessional statement made by Dr Yu Tsun, a spy for the Germans during World War I. Dr Yu needs to deliver a secret message to the Germans about a British artillery site, but his supervisor is either captured or dead. He devises an unusual way of communicating his important message.

He travels to the home of Dr Stephen Albert, a Sinologist who has been studying the labyrinthine book, "The Garden of Forking Paths." This "story within the main story" is a philosophical book about time as a labyrinth. Borges presents an interesting idea of a labyrinth as the forking of time (instead of the forking of space in a corn maze, for example.) All the pasts, presents, and futures are existing simultaneously in a net. As we make decisions at a fork in time, we enter into a different future. Dr Yu's decision changes not only his personal future, but the future on an international level. It's not until the end of the work that we find out the connection between the visit to Dr Albert and Dr Yu's work in espionage.

Borges seems to enjoy playing around with his readers' minds. It's difficult to tell if this is mainly a philosophical work or mainly an espionage story, and it really doesn't matter since it's such an interesting piece of writing.

"He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us."

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely.

It was exciting to join a group here devoted to short stories. And perhaps timely as well. January is the time we press ourselves to expand and possibly grow in some vaguely constructive manner. This story while very familiar (and often opaque) almost serves as an anathema to our hopeful custom. Borges understood the interstices even if peevishly he only offers a sidelong view before slamming the door. I appreciate the pursuit, the cubist rationalization and the nearly whispered consideration of the protean, the potentially parallel. Hopefull I can find a time sequence today where I can situate this in relation to The Aleph and perhaps the Jon in that sequence will be inspired to leave an account of the reconciliation?

[Olga]

All these wonderful, little stories about imaginary worlds, exploring enormous philosophical concepts - the universe, reality, time, destiny, chance, free will and the endless number of scenarios, - are meant to be read and re-read because every little detail and every word written by Borges, a magician, has a deep meaning.
I especially liked the metaphor of the infinite library containing every possible book/knowledge depicting the universe in 'The Library of Babel'. Borges is very convincing creating the image of the overwhelming vastness which implies on the futility of searching for answers.

'For every rational line or forthright statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense, and incoherency.'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
'The certitude that some shelf in some hexagon held precious books and that these precious books were inaccessible seemed almost intolerable.'
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
'The Library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, he would find after centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder.'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
'The Library will endure; illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless, equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible, secret.'

[Julie]

10/10

Where is Stephen Hawking when you need him? Given the complexity of it all, which I can't begin to explain, I'm sure he's here somewhere, perhaps looking over my shoulder.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ingenious! it's a riddle, a parable, and a philosophical story all rolled into one, that requires to be read more than once. Beautifully written by Borges who really sucks you into his world, and, like always, there is a deeper meaning to things than one first thinks, and themes of time and the infinite are ever present. Dazzling stuff!

[Mark André · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool story. Fun to read.

[Mahdie · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب هدیه ی روز تولدم بود.شروعش چندان با میل شخصیم نبود چون فکر میکردم خوندن دو مجموعه ی داستان از بورخس کافیه ولی بی اندازه خوشحالم که این کتاب را خوندم و الان به همه میگم که از بورخس هر چه قدر هم بخونیم کمه.
داستان های بورخس شروع جذابی دارند.شروعی رمان گونه که من همیشه وقتی شروع داستان هاش رو میخونم حس میکنم که بورخس اگر رمان مینوشت چه شاهکاری میشد ولی خود بورخس از نوشتن رمان بیزار بوده همیشه.
ادامه ی داستان ها توام میشن با اتفاقاتی اسرار آمیز و گاها عرفانی که این قدر بدیهی بیان میشن که جای شک و تردید باقی نمیمونه و ناخوداگاه خواننده باور میکنه که چنین دنیای اسرار آمیزی هم وجود داره و پایان داستان هاش که همیشه یک حس تعجب عمیق توام با آرامشی بی سابقه و متناقض به همراه داره.بورخس استاد کلمه است.استاد استعاره.و با اطمینان کامل میگم که از نظرم بهترین نویسنده ی داستان کوتاهه و بین همه ی مجموعه ی داستان های کوتاهی که خوندم نوشته های بورخس دنیای دیگه ایه و تمام انتظارات خواننده رو از داستان کوتاه برآورده میکنه.
بورخس گاها نسبت به چیزهایی که شنیده یا دیده و چه بسا اسرار تاریخی ای که کشف میکنه احساس مسئولیت میکنه و اونها رو مینویسه که ممکنه گاهی واسه خواننده اطلاعات جالبی نباشن.
اگر کتابخانه ی بابل رو خوندید بهتون به شدت توصیه میکنم که این مجموعه رو هم بخونید.داستان هاش واقعا زیباتر از کتابخانه ی بابل اند.
از این مجموعه از نظر من بهترین داستان هاش زخم شمشیر،الف،انجیل به روایت مرقس،مضمون خائن و قهرمان،باغ گذرگاههای هزار پیچ و جنوب هستند.
بخش دوم این کتاب اشعار بورخسه که خوندشون خالی از لطف نیست.
و بخش سوم اتوبیوگرافی بورخسه که واقعا خوندنش من رو در بهت فرو برد و واقعا باورش برام سخته که شخصی بتونه این همه بی حد و مرز بدونه و شخصیت فوق والایی داشته باشه.بعضی جاها حس میکردم بورخس یک ابر انسانه...
از روزهایی میگه که تو کتابخونه ای کار میکرده و کارمندای اون کتابخونه وقتی دائره المعارفی رو میبینن که نویسنده اش بورخس بوده بهش میگن که عجیبه که نویسنده ی این کتاب هم نام توئه.بعد از بیکار شدن بهش پیشنهاد میشه که توی کالج آزاد مطالعات عالی درباره ی موضوعات مختلف ادبی سخنرانی کنه.
بعد از اون هم کرسی ادبیات بهش پیشنهاد میشه و استادی ادبیات رو به معنای واقعی کلمه ادا میکنه.
در میانسالی نابینا میشه و تو زندگینامه اش نوشته که :در شعرم از طعن با شکوه خداوند سخن میگویم که هشت صد هزار جلد کتاب و تاریکی را همزمان به من عطا میکند.
جملات پایانی زندگینامه خیلی زیبا بودن و اینجا مینویسمشون:
میتوانم بگویم که شور جوانی اکنون از وقتی که مرد جوانی بوده ام به من نزدیکتر است.دیگر شادی را چیزی دست نیافتنی نمیدانم.زمانی خیلی پیشترها آن را چنین میپنداشتم.اکنون میدانم که شادی میتواند هر لحظه رخ دهد اما هرگز نباید به دنبال آن رفت.شکست یا شهرت چیزهایی کاملا نامربوط اند و هرگز خودم را نگران آنها نمیکنم.آنچه امروزه میجویم آرامش است.لذت اندیشیدن و لذت دوستی و هرچند این شاید خیلی بلند پروازانه باشد؛احساس دوست داشتن و دوست داشته شدن.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Borges’ stories are so dense – it took me several hours to read this tiny volume (54 pages); I’d usually read a novella twice the length in half the time. This collection is a perfect introduction to the work of a writer who can seem intimidating to the uninitiated. It has given me the confidence to read more Borges, and that seems to me exactly what these small Penguin Modern collections should do.

I’ve said this before, but there’s a special thrill to reading a famous writer’s work and immediately understanding how they've informed the work of other authors I love – that feeling of a missing puzzle piece clicking into place. From this small selection of stories, I can already see clear influences on some of my favourite books by Nina Allan and Joshua Cohen.

I’ve tried to read 'The Garden of Forking Paths' (1941) in the past and found it impenetrable (ironic, I know). This time I persisted, and although it took me a while (relatively speaking) to have any idea what was going on, by the end I saw its beauty and genius.

'The Book of Sand' (1975) was my favourite, and also the most accessible. (I wonder if that has anything to do with when it was translated – presumably much later than the others given its comparably late original publication date? It's not clear from the information at the beginning of the book.) A fascinating concept and a perfect ending.

'The Circular Ruins' (1941) is a cosmic, dreamlike fantasy, evoking its settings (the jungle and the world of one's mind) with a claustrophobic accuracy.

'On Exactitude in Science' (1946) is a paragraph only, framed as an extract; I would have taken it for an epigraph if not for the table of contents. A perfect example of a passage you have to read a few times to fully grasp its imagery.

'Death and the Compass' (1942) is a labyrinthine murder mystery. Not the sort of plot I expected to find here, and all the more pleasing for that.

TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr

[Lisa (NY)]

My brain is currently unable to process Borges.

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story I read was translated by Donald Yates.

This brilliantly written classic is like none other I have yet read. It is somewhat of a riddle. The author seems to be offering us a philosophical explanation of “time”, being truly what happens in the “now” or present, with both the past and the future taking place in one’s mind, with the result that they are all at the same time, convergent, divergent, and parallel. It is a fascinating and entirely believable hypothesis. However in providing this explanation the story reads like a mystery where the narrator is a Chinese man who is a German spy during WW1, who needs to relay a message to the Germans.

Time being like a labyrinth with “forking paths” depending on when (past, present or future), and what choice is made at each moment. Much like a spy skulking through a city, making choices and turns so as not to be followed. Despite the atmosphere of war, soldiers, death, the story is light and at times humorous. Clues are proposed and yet nothing is clear until the very end, the punchline, like a riddle. You can almost hear the author laughing as he discloses the final scene, having enjoyed the build up leading the reader through the labyrinth on a bit of a goose chase.

Brilliantly imaginative! Did the author provide an exposé on the philosophy of time, illustrated by a spy mystery, or was it a spy story, solved by the particular timing of events. Well done!

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Jorge Luis Borges Sampler
A review of the Penguin Modern paperback (February 22, 2018) collecting 5 short stories as previously published in Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings (1962), Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings (1964) with translations (#1, #3, #5) by Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby and Collected Fictions (1998) with translations (#2 & #4) by Andrew Hurley.

I wanted to sample some further Borges as I've been considering Collected Fictions (565 pages) as a possible candidate for the 2025 Long Books Challenge. I'm thinking now that the complete collection might be more than I can handle 🤯.

This is a decent enough sampler, but it took me a bit of research to figure out who translated which story as they didn't bother to identify them 1 to 1. This slim paperback also has no Introduction or Afterword so it is missing things like Borges own commentaries, such as his 1941 note on #1:

("The Garden of Forking Paths") is a detective story; its readers will witness the commission and all the preliminaries of a crime whose purpose will not be kept from them but which they will not understand, I think, until the final paragraph.

So this is recommended as a sampler, but be prepared to google for further background and information.

[4.2 star average for the 5 stories]
1. The Garden of Forking Paths ***** Originally published in El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (1941) and then Ficciones (1944). On the surface this is a story of a Chinese spy who works for Imperial Germany during the 1st World War. While on the run from the authorities, the spy ends up at the home of a sinologist who has uncovered the secret multiverse labyrinths of the spy's ancestor's novel. That barely scratches the surface of a story which is said to be an example of the multi-worlds theory of quantum mechanics. You can read more (Spoilers obviously) at Wikipedia.

Title page of the original 1944 edition of "Ficciones". Image sourced from AbeBooks.

2. The Book of Sand ***** Originally published in el libro de la arena (1975). A man buys a book from a Bible seller which is written in an unknown language with occasional illustrations. The cover says that it is holy writ, but it is otherwise known as the book of sand. He discovers that the book is of infinite length. As you turn pages, more pages start to grow in the front and the back.

Summer was drawing to a close, and I realized that the book was monstrous. It was cold consolation to think that I, who looked upon it with my eyes and fondled it with my ten flesh-and-bone fingers, was no less monstrous than the book.

3. The Circular Ruins **** Originally published in the literary journal Sur (December 1940) and then as in 1. above. A man rests and dreams in the ruins of an abandoned temple. He dreams another man into existence while realizing that he himself is someone else's dream.

This circle was a temple, long ago devoured by fire, which the malarial jungle had profaned and whose god no longer received the homage of men.

4. On Exactitude in Science *** Originally published in a journal March 1946. This is only a half page story describing a fanatical group of cartographers who design a map of an Empire which is as big as the Empire itself.

5. Death and the Compass **** Originally published in the literary journal Sur (May 1942) and then collected in Ficciones (1944). A detective deduces that a series of murders must be following a pattern derived from the Tetragrammaton i.e. the names of God. He follows that trail to a fateful conclusion.

The latter wanted to talk about the murder; Lönnrot preferred to discuss the diverse names of God; the journalist declared, in three columns, that the investigator Erik Lönnrot, had dedicated himself to studying the names of God in order to come across the name of the murderer.

Bonus Track I once designed a JLB bingo card, based on a prompt from the GR is dying? discussion group 😊, so I am recycling it here.


Trivia and Links

Jorge Luis Borges's The Garden of Forking Paths is part of a 50-volume Penguin Modern (May 30, 2019) boxset issued by Penguin Books. The promo description reads:

This box set of the 50 books in the new Penguin Modern series celebrates the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics list and its iconic authors. Including avant-garde essays, radical polemics, newly translated poetry and great fiction, here are brilliant and diverse voices from across the globe. Ground-breaking and original in their day, their words still have the power to move, challenge and inspire.

The box set is a limited edition which may gradually become rarer to source. The books are available individually, but will also likely become rare items.
WARNING Amazon.ca and Amazon.com are showing only a nominal fee ($1.99 Cdn, $2.53 US) for a supposed Kindle edition of the 50-volume boxset. DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM, THE KINDLE ITEM IS A LIST OF TITLES ONLY AND DOES NOT CONTAIN THE ACTUAL COMPLETE BOOKS.
You can read the list of titles for free at the Penguin Modern link above.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

85th book of 2020.

These were all brilliant- philosophical, labyrinthine stories. I've had some sentences, some fragments from each of the stories prevail upon me, so I will blur the lines between the 5 stories within this, leaving no distinction from which each comes - so my review, in itself, becomes another labyrinth. As ever, Borges' actual words (or anyone else who is not me) will be italicised.

It seems recently that more and more, this wonderful line of Frost's is becoming more applicable:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both

The garden's metaphor for "time" itself - This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke offor were unaware of one another centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. And we may lay in temples and hallucinate, we may imagine our selves, not 'ourselves' but many of our 'self', in different bodies, walking different roads, for we are sorry we cannot travel both. To see where the winding path leads, from that forking path. Soon enough we realise that the forking paths are infinite, there are infinite possibilities, a book with no beginning or end, a book you could thumb through forever and make no progress. One can make no progress through time except forward. Even when life makes little sense, and murders begin to happen, and if one kills the right man, then maybe the correct city will be bombed, maybe a book can be buried (but not forgotten) and maybe in the end - you realise you never existed anyway. Maybe you'll realise this with relief, with humiliation, with terror...

[Federico DN · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quantum Borges.

Yu Tsun is a german spy and on the run from the implacable Richard Madden, an officer who killed another spy and is now hard on his tail to have him hanged. In a sudden and risky move, knowing he might as well consider himself already dead, he decides to travel by train to Ashgrave, to fulfill his final mission.

Not the worst short story I've read by Borges. It's a readable, which is a rare plus, yet the idea is complex in its way. The storytelling is somewhat complex, and the meaning of it is definitely complex. In essence, the dude is complex; not that Borges can avoid at all being any other way.



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PERSONAL NOTE :
[1968] [10p] [Fiction] [1.5] [Not Recommendable]
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★★☆☆☆ Ficciones <--
★★☆☆☆ Borges: Cuentos
★☆☆☆☆ Borges profesor: Curso de literatura inglesa en la Universidad de Buenos Aires [1.5]
★☆☆☆☆ El tamaño de mi esperanza [0.5]

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Borges Cuántico.

Yu Tsun es un espía alemán que huye del implacable Richard Madden, un oficial que mató a otro espía y ahora lo persigue sin descanso para que lo ahorquen. En un maniobra repentina y arriesgada, sabiendo que bien podría considerarse ya muerto, decide viajar en tren hasta Ashgrave, para cumplir su misión final.

No es el peor cuento corto que he leído de Borges. Es leible, lo cual es en una característica poco común, pero la idea compleja a su manera. La narración es algo compleja, y su significado es ciertamente complejo. En esencia, el tipo es complejo; aunque no es que Borges pueda evitar para nada ser de otra manera.



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NOTA PERSONAL :
[1968] [10p] [Ficción] [1.5] [No Recomendable]
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[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review to come sometime in the near future when I finally get enough time to myself to write reviews for everything I've read recently. I got very strong Bioshock Infinite vibes from the concept, which is always a good thing, and it also put me in mind of the superb Doctor Who episode called The Girl Who Waited- both of these, of course, came into being long after this short story was published, which makes it all the more impressive for still being so intriguing despite all the spins various media have done on its base premise.

I toyed with writing my review for El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan in Spanish, but I'm just not confident/familiar enough with all the intricacies of the language to do it.

Algún día, mis amigos.

Algún día.


(Read it here.)

[Alireza · Rating 3 out of 5]

به نظرم بورخس خوندن از پروست خوندن هم سخت تره، حداقل برای من اینطوره.
از این کتاب نسبت به کتابخانه بابل بیشتر لذت بردم و انگار تونستم خیلی بیشتر از قبل با داستان های بورخس ارتباط برقرار کنم مخصوصا که به نظرم ترجمه این کتاب هم خیلی بهتر بود. و داستان‌های زیادی بود تو کتاب که واقعا اعجاب انگیز بود و بر خلاف تجربه قبلیم فضا سازی که بورخس انجام میده رو واقعا تونستم درک و تصور کنم مخصوصا داستان ویرانه های مدور که تا مرز اشک ریختن هم من رو پیش برد ولی در عوض داستان هایی هم بودن که از همون پاراگراف اول نمیفهمیدم داستان از چه قراره و از سر ملال حتی بعضی از داستان هارو هم نیمه ول کردم.
احتمالا تا مدت زیادی سمت بورخس نخواهم رفت و اجازه میدم زمان من رو به درکش نزدیک تر کنه.

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do not think I had ever read any of Argentinian author Borges' work before picking up the forty-sixth Penguin Modern, The Garden of Forking Paths.  I was not entirely sure, from other reviews which I have seen of various pieces of Borges' work, whether this would be for me.  Collected here are several 'fantastical tales of mazes, puzzles, lost labyrinths and bookish mysteries, from the unique imagination of a literary magician', and all were first published during the 1940s.  They have been variously translated by Donald A. Yates, Andrew Hurley, and James E. Irby.

The stories in this collection are the title story, alongside 'The Book of Sand', 'The Circular Ruins', 'On Exactitude in Science', and 'Death and the Compass'.  All are very short, and 'On Exactitude in Science' covers just a single page.  There are some interesting ideas at play throughout, and I found the collection strange and unusual.  I could never quite guess where the stories were going to end up.

Whilst I found The Garden of Forking Paths interesting enough to read, and enjoyed some of the quite beguiling descriptions in its pages, it has not sparked an interest within me to pick up any more of Borges' work.  I can see why other readers would really enjoy this collection, but it was not really my style.  The tales were a little obscure for my particular taste at times, and I found that they sometimes ended a little abruptly.